THIS BLOG HAS BEEN RETIRED

THIS BLOG HAS BEEN RETIRED. I'm still going to be keeping it up here, though-- there's some pretty cool old stuff on it. That said, if you want to keep up to date with me, please go to www.georgeoconnorbooks.com.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Yesterday a bunch of my studiomates ( Simon Fraser, Becky Cloonan, Tim Hamilton and Robin Ha) and I made a trek to the Museum of Natural History to check out their new Sauropod exhibit (along with pretty much every family in NYC with a kid under 8 years old-- gotta remember about spring break next time). The Sauropod exhibit was pretty cool, but it can't hold a candle to the permanent fossil collection, and we all made many cool drawings.

Here's some of my faves:

Because it was so crowded, we spent a lot of time in the less crowded mammal rooms, or as I like to call them, "failasauruses". This is the skull of a mammal-like reptile called Moschops, which is, like, the best name ever. Becky and I kept saying "Moschops!" all day after. Go on, give it a try: Moschops!

Another mammal-like reptile, the Dimetrodon. These are the guys with the big fins on their backs.

Another fun one to say: Glyptodont! These were huge armored mammals, like if a beaver and a turtle had a baby. That's armor plating on its skull, not a hair piece.

Becky thought it would be fun if we tried to picture the glyptodont with flesh on it. Mine looks like a lazy sheep. I hope to god she puts up hers because it was disgusting.

A Brontetherium, king of a huge rhino on steroids. I drew this because the skull had compressed strangely during fossilization and it looks like he's going "aduh!". Things that go "aduh!" are awesome.

After seeing the sauropod exhibit I decided to funnel some of new-found appreciation for them into this drawing of the Apatosaurus (the dinosaur formerly known as Brontosaurus). The neck vertebra a re really quite beautiful. I had to finally abandon this drawing because people were walking in front of me and I kept losing count of which vertebra I was on.

Allosaurus may not get the press of T-Rex, but dinosaur connoisseurs know that this is the cooler carnivore. Just look at the cool sweeping lines in its skull. Becky compared it to drawing a sports car, and she was totally right.

My favorite dino, Triceratops. So much so that when everyone else left (or was swept away by a crowd of 6-year old like Tim was) I stayed behind to behind to draw this. If I had a triceratops... you'd all pay.

I also drew this picture of a Styracosaurus, a spikier but smaller cousin of Triceratops.

Finally, because I'm so HARDCORE! I joined Simon at Jack Demseys in Manhattan for the Big City Drink and Draw, where we drank and drew. I borrowed Simon's marker to draw this picture of our extremely muscular model beating the hell out of a bar chair.

Friday, April 15, 2011

Tonight's the FREE kick-off event for the 9th Annual 100 WORKS ON PAPER BENEFIT at The Kentler International Drawing Space in Red Hook, NYC, featuring cartoonists. I have a piece in this, I'll be there, so if you find yourself all wandering around Red Hook, going like , man, I feel like looking some original comics art, and maybe staring longingly across the room at George "He's over 7 foot tall and also the world's handsomest man" O'Connor, well, then, I'll be frank. You'll have a hard time finding a more appropriate event than this one.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

I suggested the Mighty Thor as today's warm-up topic, partly because apparently there's a movie coming out (cough), but mainly because the omnibus of Walt Simonson's entire run came out today. I drew my version of Thor above with a nod to Mr Simonson's stellar version.

Monday, April 11, 2011

When I was a wee one, my father (formerly a listener-to of hippie music) discovered Willie Nelson, and much of my earliest musical memories are of the illustrious Mr Nelson here. My default mental image of him is as a younger man, which I tried to capture above (with mixed results) and passed up the opportunity to draw him as the living embodiment of cragginess.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

I'm not much of an Angel fan, but I am aware that at some point he was transformed into a Muppet. Well, the world ain't big enough for two Muppet vampires, so I decided to draw Muppet Angel locked in immortal combat with Sesame Street's the Count. In the background, Janice the Vampire Slayer is torn in her duty.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Today's topic was "mango".I don't have all that much to say on the topic of mangoes, other than that they're a delicious fruit, if a little messy, so I decided to just draw a quickie subway sketch of a pretty lady enjoying a messy mango. Sorry for the lightness, but if I darkened it too much you could see the totally boss drawing of Poseidon I drew on the other side.

Monday, April 4, 2011

So, it turns out that the first ever cellphone call was made 38 years ago today. Who knew the cellphone was so old? It's older than me!

I think the first time, in my own limited worldview, that I really became aware of the soon-to-be-ubiquitous cell phone was about 1995, give or take a year. So, as I am often prone to do, I tried to imagine what 1995 George, if while on one of his patented Angry Walks® through 1995 NYC, would think if he accidentally walked through a space-time wormhole to the NYC of 2011 and saw all the peoples on their bluetooth headsets.

Used to be, you could spot the crazies in NYC a mile off, as they'd be the ones merrily yammering to themselves. Now, we all are. Yay cell phones!

It's the official blog of George O'Connor!

I am an author, illustrator and cartoonist living in Brooklyn. Questions, queries, comments please email me at geooco@gmail.com. I desperately want you to know that all original artwork is copyrighted to George O'Connor unless otherwise noted. Desperately.